I will remember Hugh Hefner for his legacy as a disgusting man-whore and dirty old man who did more than anyone in the history of humankind to promote sexism, misogyny, the sexual objectification of women, and the sexual exploitation of women.

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No, Hugh Hefner Did Not Love Women

Jill Filipovic

Time magazine online (Ideas)

September 30, 2017

Link: http://time.com/4963765/n...ove-women/

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What Hefner and Playboy never did was present women as human, or consider us anything like men. Hefner made female sex objects more relatable and accessible — the Playboy centerfold was the girl next door, not the famous movie actress —but this wasn't so much an elevation as a downward shift: social permission for men to look at all women through the zipper in their jeans, and not even bother to pretend it was otherwise.

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Hefner advocated for contraception and abortion rights, sure, but because those things benefited men’s sex lives, not because they were necessary components of female freedom. He didn’t fundamentally challenge a view of sex as something women provide to men and that is primarily about male pleasure and experience, with women in a performative role. If anything, he took that existing sexual imbalance and magnified it, creating a brand that is synonymous with sexualized women being gazed at as things a man might want to acquire.

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Hugh Hefner's true legacy: mainstreaming the sexual objectification of women

Patrick Trueman

The Washington Examiner online (Opinion)

September 28, 2017

Link: http://www.washingtonexam...le/2635959

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With Hugh Hefner's death, the media has erupted in praise for his alleged contributions to society through the pornography magazine he founded, Playboy.

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In reality, Hefner leaves behind a colossal legacy of sexual exploitation.

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Perhaps most alarming of all, research shows that pornography is linked to increased sexual violence. A meta-analysis of 46 studies reported that the effects of exposure to pornographic material are "clear and consistent," and that pornography use puts people at increased risk for committing sexual offenses and accepting rape myths.

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Hugh Hefner preached sexual liberation, but he never stopped exploiting women's bodies

Robin Abcarian

The Los Angeles Times online (California Journal)

September 28, 2017

Link: http://www.latimes.com/lo...story.html

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Anyway, I’d come to the mansion to interview Wendy Hamilton, a 23-year-old from Detroit who had been selected to be Playboy magazine’s Miss December 1991. I was told by the magazine people that I was the first reporter they’d ever allowed to witness a centerfold shoot, which I had done some days earlier in the studios of the Playboy building on Sunset Boulevard.

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It was the least sexy photo shoot I’d ever seen, but it was the culmination of a girlhood dream for Hamilton. When she was 10, she saw her father’s Playboy centerfold calendar in the garage and solemnly told him, “One day, Daddy, I am gonna be one of those girls.”

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Who knows how many other little girls were infected by the idea that taking off their clothes for men would be the pinnacle of achievement?

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Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner

Ross Douthat

The New York Times online (Opinion)

September 30, 2017

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2...efner.html

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His success as a businessman showed the rotten side of capitalism — the side that exploits appetites for money, that feeds leech-like on our vices, that dissolves family and religion while promising that consumption will fill the void they leave behind.

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The social liberalism he championed was the rotten and self-interested sort, a liberalism of male and upper-class privilege, in which the strong and beautiful and rich take their pleasure at the expense of the vulnerable and poor and not-yet-born.

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Hugh Hefner was the ultimate enemy of women – no feminist anywhere will shed a tear at his death

Dave MacLean

The Independent online

September 29, 2017

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hugh-hefner-dead-death-playboy-mansion-bunny-women-misogynist-predatory-enemy-a7972046.html

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To claim that Hefner was a sexual liberationist or free speech idol is like suggesting that Roman Polanski has contributed to child protection

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Hefner was responsible for turning porn into an industry. As Gail Dines writes in her ...n industry, he took it from the back street to Wall Street and, thanks in large part to him, it is now a multibillion dollar a year industry. Hefner operated in a country where if you film any act of humiliation or torture – and if the victim is a woman – the film is both entertainment and it is protected speech.

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Hugh Hefner Was My Enemy

Susan Brownmiller

The New York Times online (Opinion)

September 29, 2017

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2...ml?mcubz=1

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Despite all the hard-won gains women have made in this country, untold numbers of American women go under the knife to look like playmates. Of course I’m not blaming the bunny image exclusively, but I sure think that silicone inflated D-cups of the servers in the Playboy clubs played a significant role in shaping many young women’s aspirations.

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Are we really O.K. with the reality that our girls are being raised in a world that Mr. Hefner made? I’m not.

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Hugh Hefner damaged countless women’s lives. Let’s not pretend otherwise

Liz Posner

Salon.com via AlterNet

September 29, 2017

Link: https://www.salon.com/2017/09/29/hugh-hefner-damaged-countless-womens-lives-lets-not-pretend-otherwise_partner/

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Hugh Hefner has died, and already a slew of rosy obituaries are surfacing from those who knew him, those who idealized his Playboy Mansion life, and those who want to pay tribute to his impact on the American sexual revolution. These obituaries laud Hefner for his outspoken support of civil rights and his role in liberating American culture from its sexual conservatism. But now is as opportune a moment as any to consider his outdated, misogynist views of women, and the damage he's done to the cause of feminism as well as the case against him as a sexual predator.

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"Hugh Hefner is no 'hero' – he built an empire on misogyny"

Claire Heuchan

Glamour online

September 28, 2017

Link: http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/hugh-hefner-sexist

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Reading all of the glowing tributes to Hugh Hefner, I wonder if some sort of collective amnesia has struck. It is a sad thing when any life comes to an end, particularly for grieving family and friends. And yet so many celebrations of the Playboy founder’s work gloss over the sexism that was the foundation of Hefner’s company. Hugh Hefner profited from misogyny – he built an empire on it.

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The only thing Hugh Hefner liberated was the zip on his trousers

Julia Hartley-Brewer

The Sun online

September 29, 2017

Link: https://www.thesun.co.uk/...-trousers/

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Rather than a genius, Hefner was a bloke who saw women as mere bodies to be used and sold

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His true legacy is to show how, with enough greed and cynicism, you can build an enormous fortune from one of the oldest maxims in the world: sex sells.

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Yet the highest price has been paid by all the women who didn’t take his dollars to wear bunny ears, but instead have to live with the consequences of the society he helped to create.

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A society where women are seen as things to look at, to touch, to have sex with and not as real valuable human beings.

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Hugh Hefner's Deeply Troubling View of Women Is Part of His Legacy

Amy Odell

Cosmopolitan online

September 28, 2017

Link: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a12502503/hugh-hefner-complicated-legacy/

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Hefner’s death and progressive philosophies do not mean that we should ignore or forget his many regressive ones — or about the many allegations that he was disturbingly manipulative and emotionally abusive to many women who spent time in the Playboy mansion in recent years. He was a man who, in 2010 (!), told the Daily News, “The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects. If women weren't sex objects, there wouldn't be another generation. It's the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go 'round. That's why women wear lipstick and short skirts.”

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When you really dig into his life, it’s easy to understand why Hefner wanted women to be bunnies. They’re silent, inhuman, and charming. The won’t intellectually challenge you. They’re nice to look at. They might even submit to your cuddles.

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Hefner’s Death Leaves Behind A Legacy Of Sexual Oppression, Not Sexual Liberation

Anna Tippett

HuffPost United Kingdom

September 29, 2017

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost...25426.html

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And with children increasingly being brought into sexualised culture, we have to ask ourselves what the Playboy brand is teaching our young girls. For example, the selling of Playboy fragrances and pencil cases down the children’s aisle sends out a cultural message that we our raising our young girls to pleasure the opposite sex.

Michelle: Too bad we never had a guy like this out here in INDIA!!